If you use the website in a way that they would normally ask money for, like circumventing a paywall, is that something they could claim damages as in missed revenue for? I wonder if this ruling makes it legal to scrape for data processing.
Strictly speaking, what is legal is up to a judge, and whether the evidence shows that you've done what is legal may be up to either a jury or a judge depending on whether it's a jury or bench trial.
Strictly speaking, what evidence is admissible is up to a judge. In a jury trial, what is legal is up to the jury. Juries can still nullify, as was made clear in the Zárate verdicts.
Strictly speaking, even when the jury nullifies, it does so by answering questions of fact, not law (even though some or all of the jurors may be substituting judgements of law for fact.)
And, even more strictly speaking, in a civil case (which this subthread is addressing) it's all up to the judge anyway, even in a jury trial, since (unlike in a criminal case, where this can only happen to the benefit of the defendant, as a judgement of acquittal), a decision for either party may be entered, after the jury verdict, as a judgement as a matter of law (aka judgement notwithstanding the verdict.) This makes nullification essentially a dead issue in civil trials.
You are incorrect, sir. The judge decides all questions of law, and the jury may not do so. That is why juries are given jury instructions by the judge. Jury nullification in a criminal case is an oddity, but that is not a decision about the law (and is not binding in future cases), nor is it applicable in the civil context we are discussing.
If you paid for the access, sure you could scrape. Now if you want to further distribute that data you scraped you might run into problems depending upon the terms of the license you agreed to when you purchased access...
Sure, but they are only likely to pursue civil action if competitors scraped in a manner that resulted in meaningful losses, i.e by scraping a competitor's data in violation of the TOS and then selling or representing it as your own.
A few people circumventing paywalls isn't going to register on the legal radar.
